for my mama

Here is a page I finished today. I have been wanting to scrap this photo since it was taken (about 3 days before Eleana was born in 2005!) and finnnaaallly have the paper and items to do it justice I think. Funny how I spent so much time on this, and then we had an argument on the phone tonight. No worries though, we are always quick to forgive and apologize.

My mom is so many things for me, and this one little page doesn't begin to sum it all up. I'm thinking about making a page to go with this one with just journaling, to tell our story once and for all.



The journaling reads: "Thank you for choosing me, for saving me from a bleak future." The year, 1986, isn't the date of our adoption. Mom actually adopted me in 1989, but I started living with her off and on in 1986. I was only 4 at that time. She was my number one caregiver from that point in time, so that's the date I go with. We are coming up on our 20th adoption anniversary in October of next year. We celebrate the court date - October 5, 1989, though truly we've been mother and daughter for 22 years.






Okay, products!: the paper is from K and Co's Urban Rhapsody line (I have another piece of this...love the owl!), the flash card ("love you") is 7gypsies, The word "mother" came from a piece of mother themed paper by Karen Foster Design (love this one too!), the "mom" brad is also from KFD, the paperclip is making memories, the 2 felt flowers are junkitz, the exclamation and plus sign are sandylion stickers, the arrow chipboard sticker is also K and Co's UR line, the house was given to me at a crop, so I'm not sure where it came from. Also used green stickles, rubber stamps ("since"), funky chipboard swirl (colorbok), smiley sticker, green ribbon, and the words "tres jolie" I cut from the bottom of a piece of Tres Jolie paper I have. I love French, and it means "very pretty" so I thought that was fitting for ma mere. oh, and the 1986 is rubons from My Mind's Eye Magnolia line.

PARTY!

Ok, well you all saw the last two presents I made for my SIL's 30th b'day party. This was the last gift I made her. She is a new scrapper and loves the new word books. The last time she was over she was looking at my friend album and said, "God, I love these books." Knowing I was already finished with her gifts I still had to make her one. This is the PARTY chipboard word book from BO BUNNY! I am a really gigantic fan of these albums as you are all aware. I used all Junkitz Salsa Celebrations papers. What I loved about these papers are the colors are so much fun and they are double sided. One side has a cool design while the other has a lighter design in a solid color which is what I used on every other page. Two additional papers were used, Pink Bazzill and Creative Imaginisce bodacious flowers pp. Also used were loads of ribbon, lots of rub ons, Junkitz Birthday Quotes from the Salsa Celebration Line, Flowers with bling from Target dollar bin. Bling from Prima, Bling from cell phone bling (Walmart), Queen & Co Felt Flowers, Karen Foster Brads, prima flowers, heart brad, love side kick thing I punched out years ago, ribbon slide on the back cover, Junkitz chipboard flowers, Jolees 30th birthday 3d stickers, stickles, fancy pants flower chipboard, photo corner by basic grey, pebbles my mom got me at a yard sale with sayings on them, cloud 9 quotes, signo pen and there you have it! xoxoxoxo Nicole ENJOY! My sister in law LOVED IT! I was thrilled, always makes me so happy seeing my creations opened as gifts. Makes all the work so worth it!

Where the magic happens

It's me again! Thought I would post pictures of my scrapping space.
This is the view when I walk into the room. Computer desks are on the left and scrappy happiness on the right.

My Challenge

I can officially say that I am DONE with this challenge! I presented the challenge of finishing any left over LO or projects that have been lingering in the back of a drawer or being passed from one pile of junk to the next. I suggested this challenge mainly because I wanted to make myself finish up my son's baby book...needless to say, I still haven't finished it! Why? Well, let me tell you...to put it plainly, it sucks! It was the second project I ever worked on, back when I started scrapping with CM. I just can't find it in me to finish it when I hate it to begin with. Will I redo it? Nope. I think it's fun to look back on earlier work to see how far I've come. What I have decided to do is to make a DVD slide show of all the pictures from when he was a baby and will include that in the album. There. All done. LOL I may still do some pages from cute pictures that I have and love...but I may not too.
Anywho, this two page LO is one that we did in a class last year with Adri-. It's where I met the infamous Sharon and Nichole, BTW. This little gem has been sitting in my pile 'o crap for a year now! It was a nice thought, but a PITA to cut out all the puzzle pieces. Plus being that I am not a huge fan of the paper, it really was hard to wrap this one up.
This is a Christmas page of my son and Niece's. The paper is from a stack pack. I was trying out the Diamond glaze, didn't like how it looked so put it in the drawer. I decided that it was just a trial and must be put into an album if nothing else than to show what not to do.
This last LO is one that I started forever ago too. I was at a crop, it was nearing the end of the night - you know, the point when you really should be wrapping things up - not starting another page? Well here I was stuck with this page. I had all the pictures tacked down already, couldn't back away. Taking it out of the drawer, I just added a title and some journaling. Calling it a day on this one too.

All in all I am glad I suggested this challenge as I did get everything out of the drawer 'o crap...not all pleased with the results, then again, when am I ever? LOL

Sharing other challenge I did

Description: BFF, attached at the hip challenge Kristie is hosting on sb.com! It has the twists BLING, FELT & Flowers. You get an extra vote if you use the twists!

Good Times - This picture is of us in Hawaii heading to the Marine Corp Ball. It was December 2, 1999. Kim and I met when we were babies at the age of 18. Both of us married to Marines. Both of us stationed in Hawaii and lived on the same street on Kaneohe Bay. It was destined that we found each other! We built a friendship like no other. I am the godmother to her godson. I was in the room with her when he was born, he will be 10 this October. It will be 10 years this year that we have known each other. It amazes me how close we are. She now lives in her home state of PA and I live in MA. We see each other 2-3X a year and talk on the phone about 10x a day. Our daughters are only 9 days apart.

The clear button above the picture is a hidden tag by fancy pants and it reads... "If ever there is tomorrow when we're not together, There is something you must always remember, you are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem and smarter than you think. But the most important this is, even if we're apart, I'll ALWAYS be with you." -Winnie the Pooh

On the back of the quote I wrote some journaling... Kim & I going to the Marine Corp Ball. December 2, 1999. We have been friends for so many years now. I can't picture my life without her in it! We have since moved back to our hometown, but that doesn't stop us from seeing each other 2-3X a year and talking on the phone 10X a day!

I used my signo pen to write Winter in Hawaii. December 2, 1999 The Butterfly on the blue paper is by Bohemia (bought this on Clarence on the Bus Tour last year), the rub on letters are like doodling, I love them and threw out the wrapping so I have no idea who makes them. The pps are all from Fancy Pants the Sweet Spring line. One of the papers is from K&I Green Heredity, The tag is also from Fancy Pants sweet spring line. The Bazzill is cranberry, The felt is by no other than Q&CO. The bling I got at Walmart in the craft section, it's made for cell phones but I love it cause already has adhesive on it and looks dynamite on scrappy layouts. The top scalloped strip is from the Fancy pants titles and tags also sweet spring. The Last F in BFF is made by Chip Chatter Gellies by pressed Petals. The insides of the snowman bellies on every other snowman are leftover chipboard circles from Fancy pants big flourishes that I inked with a color box cats eye. Brad, ribbon and flowers unknown! Also I entered it for the April rub on challenge on SB.com.

Who's next for a Challenge, can you tell I am ADDICTED TO CHALLENGES! :0)

Love you gals! Nicole - Scraphappynicole that is!

rosy cheeks

So finally I finished something for this challenge of Jenn's. I have about 4 other things I'd like to finish, but the time just isn't available at the moment. This is mostly because it takes me about 2 hours to complete a page, start to finish. Maybe longer depending on my mood. I just get so darn picky about everything.

This page has been sorta waiting around for me to finish since about January. It's been staring at me from the page protector on my shelf since then, begging me to finish it.



My apologies for the poor photo. Lighting sucks at 12:30am. I love these pictures of Eleana so very much. The colors are so nontypical for a snow/winter page in my opinion, so that gave me a lot of options as far as product to use. I could definitely think outside the box for this one.


you can read that, right?

I used alllll sorts of things for this. The floral blue PP is Tres Jolie, the diecut paper is Making Memories, and the shimmery stripe is KI Memories. I used American Crafts thickers and plastic arrows/photo corners as well (remember those Sha?). The transparency is meant to frame a photo, but I really like it the way I used it here. It's from the Magnolia line, like Bohemia. And then the gel stickers are Love, Elsie (the Zoe line) as is the chipboard frame (the Jack and Abby line) and I also used a teeny tiny scrap of Love, Elsie paper (to the left of the larger photo) to write Eleana's name and the date of the photos. The paper tab is Heidi Swapp, and the round journaling paper is CK memories or whatever, some line from them, there are like 1,000,000. add some sweet words, pink staples, and Stickles around the diecut paper and voila!

Challenges

Jenn, Thank you for putting such a useful challenge at hand. I did a few things for this challenge. I finally altered a wine holder that I bought over a year ago at Michael's, which would of sat in my scrap room for another year had we not had the challenge. Works out perfect too because my SIL is a big Wine gal and she will FLIP for this. It's her 30th Birthday. The Second thing I did was scrapped my daughters nicknames she had as a baby. I wanted to do this for so long before I forgot some of them. Last I used the transparency you told me to buy for a lo of my sister and that is just what I did and at the same time I entered it into two additional challenges on SB.com. So, you have had me working my tail off and I thank you for that!

The Strength LO is a transparency. I added some stickers to the top of it and journaled underneath it on the circle with my fav pen. I added a tag which has additional journaling when you lift up the transparency you can see the journaling. I attached the tag to the back of the transparency. I used pewter star brads to hold the transparency to the paper. This was my first time using transparency paper. I like it. It was a bit hard trying to journal in the circle because I had to keep laying the paper over it to see if the picture would cover the journaling. As you can tell from the pic, I made a lil' boo boo and had to cut the picture a little to reveal some of the journaling!

The journaling reads...

October 4, 2006 the world changed. My brother-in-law, Edward M. Garvin was killed in action in Anbar Provice, Iraq. At the age of 19. At 20 years old my sister Melissa lost her best friend, her soul mate, her husband. My sister & brother-in-law were life long friends, meeting in the 2nd grade and attached at the hip. My sister has such strength that amazes me and makes me so very (PROUD)! My brother-in-law made the ultimate sacrifice for our country, for our children, for our freedom. The families of these fallen Hero's know all too well that FREEDOM ISN'T FREE!

Most would think my sister sits home crying and that is so far from the truth! Since my brother-in-laws passing my sister has raised over 18,000 in which she auctioned off her wedding dress to raise money for the BOY SCOUTS, an organization Eddy was very involved in to send underprivileged boys to boy scout camp for the summer. We have marched in parades and Melissa has recently joined the Soldiers Angels to help families of fallen soldiers. I am so PROUD of her! Quote under the circle reads "And I'm proud to be an American, where at least I know I'm Free. and I won't forget the men who died and gave that right to me" Lee Greenwood. (the d is hidden behind the sticker because of the transparency. It was hard to journal because The circle and the quote were on the bazzill and I had to match up where the transparency had words or the stickers I put on it.

Behind the tag with the stars on it, it reads - Parris Island, SC

Pictured - my sister & brother-in-law at his Marine Corp boot camp graduation.

Used for the layout - Creative Imaginations Strength transparency, Reminisce stickers (Hero & Proud stickers) & arrow. Reminisce Star Journaling Tag, Pewter star brads

This lil' number is my dd as a baby. In each petal I stamped 2 nicknames. I used my Walmart alpha stamps and my CTMH ink (which I love) I cut out her face and placed it in the middle of the flower. I outlined the petals and stem using Platinum stickles. I also used the stickles to outline the edge of the picture to the side. Stamped her name above the picture and added Queen & Co Felt flowers


As for this number, I used my fav papers from DCWV to match the album I made my sister in law which is also a gift for her 30th. PP is Pocket full of daisy line. I used Queen & Co felt flowers and added bling to all the places I felt needed bling! =) I used CTMH ribbon and the letters on the inside are BG. Signed the bottom and called it a day!
So, I feel like I got a lot done. Thanks again Jenn!